Home Sweet Homeschool

One of my Blogger friends (Mommy Belle) has asked me to write an entry on why we have decided to homeschool Annabelle. This was actually something that Hubby and I decided to do long before Annabelle was born. For us, the decision to homeschool was a direct result of some of the things that we saw happening in the public school sector with our older daughter. I was, and still am, dismayed at what I see in Gabby's public high school and what I have seen in her previous (public) middle school. I realize that no one system is perfect....nor can one shoe fit everybody who tries it on. But for me, and Hubby agrees, the things that we have seen and experienced at Gabby's school are simply unacceptable. Unfotunately, Gabby is so rooted in the system that I believe taking her out would be detrimental to her. Homeschooling only works if the student benefits from the experience. I don't believe Gabby would.....but I do believe Annabelle would. I've never homeschooled a child before, so I guess Annabelle is going to be my "lab rat" so to speak.

Before deciding to homeschool my daughter, I had to sit down and figure out what it was, exactly, that I wanted for her. What kind of person do I want her to become? What kind of education do I want her to have? By thinking through these things, I had to ask myself an entirely different set of questions as well: by being in a public school, will Annabelle be able to make friends with people who have the same values that we do? Will she be able to stand up to peer pressure and say "no" when her friends try to talk her into doing something that she knows she shouldn't? How big will her classes be and will her teacher be able to give Annabelle any individual attention if she really needs it? What happens if the school runs low on money...will the quality of her education suffer for that? Will Annabelle be taught certain "moral values" that I feel should not be taught in a public school? What if something really bad happens at school...will Annabelle feel comfortable enough talking to me about it? What kinds of books will she have access to in the library? I don't know the answers to any of these questions and, quite honestly, I don't like that. I don't like not knowing what will be happening in my daughter's classroom. I don't like not knowing what she may (or may not!) be learning in school. I don't like having so little control over her education. As it is right now, Gabby brings home books from her school library that are so full of sex and underage drinking that it actually makes me blush to read some of this stuff! And I won't even get into the foul language that these books contain! Why can't she bring home some of the classics? What's wrong with Mark Twain or the Bronte Sisters? What about some of the translated classics of Tolstoy or Cervantes? Well, the main problem is that these timeless classics are not available on my daughter's library shelves. Why aren't they available? Because the shelves are too full of the "Gossip Girl" series and other individual books that tout the benefits of sleeping with your best friend's boyfriend (as long as he's cute!) To counter this disturbing pattern of trashy novel reading, I have offered Gabby some of the books from my bookcase, in an effort to expose her to a little bit of literary culture (and class!) What do you suppose happens when a 15 year old girl, who has been reading nothing but "fast food" literature for so long, finally gets her nose into a more "classic" novel like "Rebecca" (Daphne du Maurier)? Well, what happens is that the 15 year old girl simply doesn't have the ability to understand it. Gabby has been reading these morally bankrupt novels containing watered down vocabulary for so long now, that she simply is not able to understand anything else. "Rebecca" is not a difficult book to understand, but it contains no foul language. This means those places where the foul language would have been now contain actual multi-syllabic words, some of which Gabby has never heard before. This would be a perfect opportunity for some vocabulary enrichment......but, well, I guess that's too much work. Gossip Girls is easier. All these years of Gabby doing book reports, I honestly thought she was reading the same kinds of books I read when I was in (public) school. I never realized what she was actually reading since many of these books stay in her backpack or her bedroom. I guess I just assumed she was reading something intelligent, not realizing that nothing intelligent was available. Now Gabby is so hooked on this garbage that she refuses to read anything else. I don't want to go through this with another daughter.

When Gabby was in the 6th grade, I remember her bringing home a book called "Stone Soup". For those who don't know, this is actually a 3rd grade book. I confronted Gabby about this and told her that I would not allow her, a sixth grader, to write a book report on a 3rd grade book. She informed me that she had no choice, that this was the book her teacher had given her and told her to write about. After questioning Gabby further, I found out that they had been tested that day, and that Gabby tested at a 3rd grade reading level. When I found this out, I requested a conference with her teacher. At the conference, I informed the teacher that I was aware of the reading test that Gabby took, and that she tested at a 3rd grade level. However, I did not want Gabby reading 3rd grade books for her book reports. I Wanted her to read something on her level, or at the very least, one level higher (4th grade) so that she could improve her reading and get caught up as soon as possible. Long story short, the teacher would not work with me and would not help me. She told me that Gabby was reading at a 3rd grade level, and she would not be allowed to check out anything but 3rd grade books. Well, if a 6th grade reads nothing but 3rd grade books, she will never improve her reading skills. That afternoon, I put Gabby on a reading schedule. We started with 4th grade books, mostly Nancy Drew, and slowly worked our way up to 6th grade ones. She read 40 minutes every day and, in the course of one school year, brought her reading level up from a 3rd grade one to a 6th grade one. It took my intervention to do it, and I received absolutely no support from her teacher. I thought teachers and parents were supposed to work together for the good of the student?! What happens when the teacher is uncooperative?

What happens when the teacher's hands are tied and she CAN'T help her students? Gabby got in trouble in class one day and was disciplined, along with two other students, for mouthing off to the teacher. Her punishment was sentences. She had to write 50 sentences indicating that it was wrong to mouth off and she wouldn't do it again. I don't remember the exact sentence that she had to repeatedly write, but it wasn't an obnoxiously long one. She came home and wrote them and I checked every single one of them. The punishment fit the crime, and I had no problem with her writing these sentences. The next day, when she came home from school, I asked her if she turned her sentences in to the teacher. Yes, she did, however...........one of the other students wrote 7 sentences before deciding it was a stupid punishment and stopped writing them. The other student complained to his mother and his mother called the teacher and told the teacher that her son didn't want to write the sentences and, therefore, would not be turning his in. So what happened to Gabby's sentences? Evidently the teacher felt it was unfair to punish only one of the students when all 3 were guilty, so Gabby got 50 extra credit points for her sentences. Yes, my daughter received extra credit for mouthing off to her teacher! I was furious.

These are just a few of the scenarios that I have had to deal with. I won't even mention the teacher who asked the students to bring in a DVD from home so they could watch it in class the next day. Why were they watching a DVD? Because the teacher didn't feel like making up a lesson plan for the following day.

Gabby failed science this year, which means she will need to take science in her senior year, when all her friends have an elective class instead. Gabby tells me that she, in fact, will NOT need to take science in her senior year because the school will simply take one of her current elective classes and turn it into a science credit. Now, a friend of mine (who happens to be a school teacher) says this can't be done....that Gabby will definitely need to take a science class in her senior year. Gabby, however, is absolutely insistant that this is how it works and that she will NOT need to take a science class in her senior year. So, in all fairness, I will need to look into this one, but to be honest with you....and I know this is going to sound terrible.....but Gabby is not creative enough to make this kind of stuff up. So she had to have heard this from someone else or known someone who had this done to them. Gabby isn't simply making this up, though, she got this information from somewhere.

I remember a couple of years ago when Gabby was having trouble in her math class. Now, math has never been a good subject for me. In fact, math was a potential career killer for me when, as a 16 year old, I decided I wanted to be a pharmacist when I grew up. Well, I couldn't pass the "advanced" math classes (they were far more difficult than the basic math classes I was in!) that I needed to get into the chemistry classes that I needed to be a science major. Sooooooo, I learned early on that a career as a pharmacist was probably not going to be in my future. Anyway, Gabby was not doing well in school and needed help in math. Fortunately, hubby is pretty good in math and could take over at this point, but I remember Gabby telling me that she had asked the teacher to explain how to do these particular math problems. Well, why didn't the teacher explain how to do them? Because there were too many students asking too many questions and the teacher didn't have time to answer everybody's questions. So some students didn't get their questions answered. Now, what happens to the student who doesn't have a parent who can help them with math? Math is not easy for everyone.....and is downright problematic for many (clearing throat here), but this can easily happen in any subject - foreign languages are a prime example. Foreign languages, like math, are either no problem at all for a person or they are a major thorn in your side. Most people don't have a "middle of the road" opinion of either one of these subjects...you either love them or you hate them. You either love math and have no problem computing numbers or, like me, you fear that you will be forever bouncing checks because you are consistantly miscalculating how much money you really have left in your checking account. The same is true with foreign languages...you either love it and can spew out verb declensions like a native speaker or you inwardly fear that you might accidently call somebody a hairy porkchop because you can't remember how to ask where the bathrooms are in French. Well, what happens when the teacher can't help you?

After listening to Gabby's horror stories about what goes on in her school, it just seemed like homeschooling Annabelle was the best choice for us. Now, I will say this: if there were a private school in the area that fit every single one of my "demands" (including location, cost, classmates, class size, quality of teachers and educational materials, curriculum, etc.) then I would be very happy sending Annabelle to that private school. However, I can't control the other students' behavior in Annabelle's class. Nor can I control how many students are in her class or what she will learn. It's just too "iffy" for me and (I'm repeating myself here, I know) because of what I see and hear in Gabby's school, I really have no desire to put Annabelle through any of that. In all honesty, I really don't think Gabby is happy at school. She says she is, and I believe that she probably really does think that she is, but I'm just not seeing it. There's a look in her eyes, a tone in her voice....a mother picks up on these things....that tells me she's not happy there. I also know she wouldn't be happy if I were to homeschool her, either. Her social life is way too important to her and I don't want her to end up resenting me because I pulled her out of public school. It's a tough call to make. If Gabby is going to be unhappy either way, then I feel it is just best to leave her where she is. No sense putting me through hell if it isn't going to make a difference to her one way or the other.

Well, this is just the beginning of the list. I could go on and on (like I haven't already!) with the reasons why we are homeschooling, but everytime I start a list like this I only come up with more reasons to write down. I have already got a homeschooling blog up and running (no entries in it yet, but it's at least up!) I am keeping this blog for my benefit....so I have a record of what Annabelle is learning and if she is progressing the way I think she should, etc. Obviously she is too young right now for any type of schooling, but I am going to start logging all the books I read to her and note her preferences....again, for my own personal knowledge. However, I will be making this blog public (as soon as I start writing in it!) so that the friends and family members who have shown curiosity toward my decision to homeschool can see how it's going for us. This blog will continue to be the main line of communication with my friends. :-)